What hobbies have you quit because you couldn't stand the community?

I started playing MtG when the very first Xbox 360 version came out, musta been 2005. I liked the video game a lot and wanted to try it IRL. There was a store near me that had magic tournaments so I went there to try it out.

It was an absolute miserable experience.

I show up to play IRL first time ever, no dice, no cool sleeves, no awesome playmat, nothing. I was so used to the computer AI to keep track of rules that I wasn't completely aware how complicated the game actually was IRL. To make matters worse, I showed up on a day that happened to be a PTQ (Pro Tour Qualifier). I thought it was just a casual "Hey buy 6 packs and build a deck with whatever you open it's all good brah!"

Everyone had their serious face on. Plus, most of the other dudes all knew each other. So I was kinda just standing around by myself, what I imagine what it's like going to a gay bar for the first time.

So I buy my 6 booster packs and sit down at the table. Everyone opens their packs at the same time. Most of the guys who completely silent and looked intense. I was seeing the cards for the first time and had no idea what they did. Had to each every single one of them. The other guys had an encyclopedic knowledge of every card. I thought the cards we would open would be the same cards I saw in the video game, but I didn't know at the time that the video game adaption had cards that were mixed from several different past and current sets, so I was completely unfamiliar with them.

I build my deck and I'm paired with a squat guy with patchy facial hair. He wasn't smiling and he didn't make eye contact with me. I sit down, win the die-roll and so I'm going first. On my very first turn, because I had such a lack of the fundamental rules (again, was trained by a computer that did a lot of the stuff automatically)... I made the mistake of accidently drawing a card from the library while being "on the play." My opponent immediately yelled "JUDGE!". I didn't know WTF was going on. My opponent looks at me as if I were the scum of the earth and tells the judge what happened. Immediate game loss.

The first time I ever played MtG in real-life, I lost before I even put down a land.

I didn't try to play Magic again for several years after that.

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent